ALDORA is an UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) developed by a team from Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya (UPC) in Barcelona.
After a long period of construction feasibility problems, HP offered UPC engineers the opportunity to print the UAV, which meant a faster way to iterate the initial design.
Working together with HP and the Nacar design studio, UPC engineers managed to design a structure that could be printed in its entirety, using the 3D printing technology offered by HP.
Due to the modular design of the UAV, 3D printing offered the option to individually dimension and shape each joint, taking into account the needs of each one.
Regarding the challenges, the main challenge for the Aldora project was to make a large-scale UAV that was light, rigid and resistant. In addition, they needed to convert the maximum internal space of the UAV into a useful volume without jeopardizing its integrity.
Regarding the manufacturing technology and materials, initially wood and carbon fiber would be used since these materials are light and resistant. For the outer shape they thought about milling expanded polystyrene, but due to the small thickness of the profiles designed to make the flight more efficient, it was impossible to mill the material.
The only way to achieve the shape they were looking for, was making molds, what it was a solution as good as expensive. In addition, the number of hours they had to invest were not viable considering that for each iteration they had to create a new mold. and because of this they decided to discard this idea and start to think "out of the box", but more concretely in Additive Manufacturing.
Structural rigidity, precision for the aerodynamic surface and maneuverability in internal areas of difficult access were three maxims that the HP 3D Multi Jet Fusion technology offered to the Aldora team, and this technology made possible the creation of a remarkable UAV, in which 90% of the parts were been additively manufactured in a HP MJF 3D Printer.
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